What is the least used letter?

[Tom Zurinskas]

Thanks,

Yes "z" is what I come up with also for the least used letter in typical
media text (newspapers).  But ~z is not the least frequent sound, because
letter "s" is often pronounced ~z.  The least frequent sound (USA English)
is ~zh, which is over 100 times rarer than the most frequent sound ~n.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL4+
See truespel.com and the 4 truespel books at authorhouse.com.


>From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: What is the least used letter?
>Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2007 11:56:06 -0700
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: What is the least used letter?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On Apr 9, 2007, at 11:22 AM, David Borowitz wrote:
>
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequencies
> >
> > Z. If you don't believe it, it's quick and easy to count letter
> > frequencies
> > in large corpora.
> >
> > On 4/9/07, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I wonder what is the least used letter?
>
>tom might have been wondering what the least used letter is *in
>trademarked names* (or something similar).  this is a much harder
>question to answer.
>
>arnold
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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